


you're the waves of my ocean

by jokeperalta



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Getting Together, One Shot, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 09:36:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4741499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jokeperalta/pseuds/jokeperalta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake crowdsources solutions to his romantic troubles. It’s varying degrees of successful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're the waves of my ocean

**charles.**

 

Jake can see it coming in his face on their lunch break that day, the smug raised eyebrows that tell him they’re about to start discussing Jake’s personal life.

“So,” Charles says, steering the conversation away from the new Captain. “How are you and Amy coping in the aftermath of your _not_ -nothingkiss?”

“It _was_ nothing,” Jake insists. It’s mostly true. Mostly. “Both kisses between myself and Amy Santiago last night were in service of the case. That was it, nothing else.”

“Both?” Charles repeats. “There were two?”

Jake hadn’t meant to mention that. “When we were with the package in the park the buyer was watching us. So Amy kissed me-” Charles’ face lights up like the Fourth of July, turns to a kind of euphoric Jake’s only seen that time they solved a burglary of expensive cooking equipment in a fancy restaurant and the owner invited him to try some of the specialist quail’s egg soufflé that Charles had been talking about for the whole case as a reward. (Jake politely declined.) “- Again, to stop our cover being blown, Charles. It didn’t mean anything!”

(Mostly.)

“But then...” Jake says, trailing off.

“But then?” Charles prompts. Pigs colonising the moon was at least slightly more likely than Charles letting this drop without knowing every detail. Jake relents with a sigh. It had been in the back of his mind literally all day, even in the fuss and upheaval of Holt leaving and the new Captain arriving. He hadn’t spoken to Amy since it happened but… furtive glances had been exchanged all morning. Beyond that, Jake’s not sure what to do.

“I kissed her in the evidence lock up this morning.”

Charles blinks at him, astonished. There isn’t a question asked out loud but Jake still feels the need to explain himself.

“She was there, I was there, it just happened? We were having a… _moment_ or something about the Captain leaving and then it just felt, I don’t know, like the right thing to do? I just did it. I didn’t think.”

“Did she kiss you back?”

Jake huffs a breath out through his nose, his fingers touching his lips subconsciously, trying to recapture the bliss of the memory. He worries about when he’s alone later on, cause he knows if he thinks too hard he’ll be able to recreate the whole thing from the ghosts of her touches—her lips on his, arm around the back of her neck too briefly, never moving her hands from his chest even when they pulled away. He rips his hand away when he realises what he’s doing, going back to half-heartedly picking at his lunch. “Yep,” Jake confirms.

Charles makes a noise that is so high-pitched Jake is mildly surprised when the neighbourhood dogs don’t come running. “I told you, didn’t I tell you? It’s never nothing! You and Amy kissing for the case opened the floodgates!”

Jake thinks Charles is probably right about that, as much as he doesn’t want to admit it. The undercover kisses were brief and distracted, but they were still the only thing he thought about when Tony handed over his Meat Supremes. His back felt tender when he stumbled into the shower this morning and he didn’t remember why until the sensory memory of being pushed up against a tree, warm lips insistent on his, snapped him wide awake.

Charles is rapt to attention, his own fancy lunch laid out in tiny Tupperware boxes that took him an age to unpack all but forgotten. “So does this mean you guys are-” Charles leans in dramatically “- _together-_ together?”

“I don’t know anymore,” Jake says, and he can’t keep the hopelessness out of his tone. “We didn’t get a chance to talk about it before the new CO arrived. It felt real to me, but even if it was Amy said literally yesterday that she doesn’t want to date another cop. I doubt she thinks I’m worth breaking her rule for. And you know… maybe I’m not.”

Saying the words aloud makes him realise how true they probably are. Some of the tentative hope he’d been feeling since they pulled back from their kiss and Amy gave him the look that he’s been replaying over and over in his head to the soundtrack of Taylor Swift’s ‘ _This Love_ ’ dies right then and there. If she didn’t want to date Majors AKA Blotter Dynamite then what hope does he have?

Ever the optimist, Charles looks at him like he’s insane for even considering this. “Of course you are! You just have to show her you are—you gotta BRG it, Jake!” Jake stares at him blankly till he explains. “BRG—Big Romantic Gesture! It’s fool proof. I know what you can do -- leave a tonne of rose petals on her desk and have them trail to you -in a tuxedo- with a candlelit evidence lock up dinner!”

Charles nods enthusiastically at his own idea and puts two thumbs up.

“Not sure the new captain would be down with me spreading rose petals all over the precinct and lighting fires in the evidence lock up, Charles, but thanks anyway,” Jake says. “And if she doesn’t want to date me then no big romantic gesture is going to change her mind and it’ll be embarrassing for both of us.”

Charles shrugs. “I think you’re wrong but it’s up to you. I got plenty more ideas where that came from if you change your mind!”

Jake nods sagely. “I’m sure you do, buddy. I’ll bear that in mind.”

 

 

**michael augustine.**

They bring Augustine in for questioning once more that afternoon because the new Captain wants them to push him harder, to see if they can’t bring down some of his associates and network while they’re at it in exchange for a lessened sentence for Augustine. Jake privately thinks it’s a waste of time but he gets that the new Captain has something to prove and (very) large boots to fill so he humours him. Jake’s proved right when Augustine doesn’t bite after an hour and half.

“Interview terminated at thirteen forty-seven,” Jake says dully, standing up and gathering up the case file.

“What’s your real name, son?” Augustine asks suddenly.

“Detective Jake Peralta.”

“And the woman you were with last night… ‘Dora’?”

“That was Detective Amy Santiago.”

“You didn’t really get engaged, did you?” Augustine surmises like he’s disappointed. Probably because he was taken in by it.

Jake smiles wryly, shaking his head. “No, we didn’t.”

“Well, I hope you’re gonna pop the question soon, otherwise I want a refund on the oysters and champagne,” Augustine quips, leaning back and lacing his hands behind his head like they’re friends having a drink together in a bar instead of in an interrogation room in a police station.

“Me and Amy… we’re- we’re not together.”

Augustine is either a very good actor or very genuinely surprised. “So the ‘boinking’ was just…?”

“Dedication to a morally upstanding career that you –a caught in the act and admitted identity thief- probably wouldn’t understand,” Jake finishes.

Augustine barks out a laugh. “Okay, son,” he says with a wink. “Whatever you say.”

The dismissive tone rubs Jake the wrong way. He isn’t supposed to be engaging with Augustine more than he has to, especially not letting him get under his skin about his personal life but he bites out “What’s that supposed to mean?” before he can stop himself.

Augustine shrugs. “You both looked pretty into it if you ask me--the only reason I didn’t suspect anything. I guess being a hopeless romantic was my downfall in the end.”

“Yeah, well. I didn’t ask you, thanks,” Jake says defensively, kicking his chair under the table. This conversation definitely should have ended five minutes ago, i.e. before it began.

“You should ask her out if you like her,” Augustine advises. It’s all Jake can do to stare at him in disbelief with his hand on the handle of the interrogation room door. “You’ll regret it if you don’t, son. Take it from a guy who knows.”

“Take it from a guy who knows how to try and fail at stealing identities, hence the fact he’s sitting in a police station with multiple identity theft charges to his name. I think I’ll pass on your advice about my love life.”

Augustine shrugs, unhurt by Jake’s sick burn. “Suit yourself. The skin’s off your nose in the end, son.”

Jake leaves then, annoyed and unsettled by the whole weird encounter. Amy’s out on a case with Rosa so he stares at her empty desk for a while until the captain sidles past and asks him about Augustine.  Amy apparently goes home straight from her case because she’s still not back by the time Jake leaves for the day. Maybe it’s a good thing.

 

 

 

**his mom.**

 

“So, what do her parents do again?”

It’s such a mom question to ask that Jake rolls his eyes so hard he’s half sure she can hear him doing it over the phone that evening. Crowd sourcing solutions to his romantic problems has finally hit the lowest low of asking his mom for advice. Not that he doesn’t love her to pieces and not that she doesn’t have her heart in the right place of course, but she generally thinks so much of him that she assumes whatever he does will be the best course of action in any given situation without giving him a conclusive answer. Flattering and sweet, but not particularly useful when he doesn’t have a course of action to begin with.

“Her dad is a cop, her mom is an elementary school teacher. They met while he was doing door duty in Queens,” Jake recites. His mom clucks her tongue approvingly. “Her parents’ parents moved to the US from Cuba in the sixties. Do you want me to ask Amy for their social security numbers and her extended family tree too?”

“No need for the sass, Jacob, I just like to know a little about the young woman my son is dating,” his mom chides.

“We’re not dating, mom. That’s kinda the thing.” Jake sighs, scratching the back of his neck with his free hand. “I don’t know what we are.”

“Is this the same Amy you’ve liked for a while? Your partner?”

“Yeah,” he answers automatically. Then, realising, he says, “Wait… I never told you I liked Amy before?”

“You didn’t need to. A mother knows these things,” she says enigmatically. There’s a pause. “Well that, and you’ve spent most of our phone conversations since she started at the Nine-Nine trying to find ways to mention her. And last February to March she was more or less all you talked about when I asked you about work—that’s when I knew there must be something going on.”

Jake is stunned into silence for a good minute. “You’ll work it out and do the right thing, Jake,” his mom finally assures him. It isn’t really advice but it’s still comforting to hear. “I know you will.”

 

 

 

**rosa.**

“You’re really trying to get me to play fairy godmother for you _again_?” Rosa asks, putting her feet up on her desk.

Jake smiles pleadingly. When Jake imagined his fairy godmother as a child, he didn’t quite picture a leather jacket-wearing, motorcycle riding and perpetually angry Detective either, but here they both are. To tell the truth, Jake mainly goes to her for advice because they’ve known each other for years, she’s opinionated enough to give him a straight and honest answer, and out of his friends, she seems to have her romantic life the most under control. Other than Holt and Terry obviously, but Holt’s gone now and they’re both long since married so they’re pretty much useless for dating advice anyway.

“Don’t you remember when we were in the academy and you took my hand, looked into my eyes and said ‘Jake, I want you to know that if you ever need any advice, about anything -including and especially romantic problems- you can talk to me’?”

Rosa stares, one eyebrow raised. Jake holds his smile even as it grows slightly desperate, hoping she’ll take pity on him. It actually seems to work. “Dude, I don’t even know why you’re asking me. It’s obvious what you need to do.”

“It is?”

“Yeah,” Rosa tells him. She picks up a case file and starts thumbing through it with no further elaboration. Jake waits until she looks up again then gestures insistently for her to continue. “Talk. To. Her.”

It’s more or less the one thing he was hoping she wouldn’t say. Talking to Amy means telling her how he feels, and telling her how he feels more than likely means rejection because she doesn’t want to date a cop and/or doesn’t feel the same way. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been hoping there’d be some magical way around this that didn’t involve actually talking to Amy about how he feels.

“Tell her how you feel. The sooner, the better,” Rosa says with finality and Jake knows she’s not going to be open to questions about he should say. “That’s all the advice I’m giving you about this. Ever.”  

 

 

 

**amy.**

Jake chews on Rosa’s advice all day. He skips quickly between knowing Rosa’s right and feeling like he’ll never work up the guts to actually do it, and he and Amy will be stuck in this awkward post-kiss stasis for the rest of their working lives together. Amy sits opposite him for most of it and Jake loses count of the number of stare-until-the-other-notices-and-look-away-and-pretend-nothing-happened exchanges they have.  He’s on the late shift today and Amy isn’t so he anxiously watches the minutes tick down to the end of her shift, caught between wanting to do or say something and being too scared to even bring it up. She logs off her computer and methodically packs away her things into her bag like she always does, but somehow it seems slower than usual.

“I’ll be going home then,” Amy announces to no one in particular. She lingers at her desk in spite of herself, then looks up—their eyes meet because he’s been openly staring at her for the past five minutes. It’s the first time they’ve held each other’s gazes since the evidence lock up yesterday morning.

Amy looks down when he says nothing, and her expression is something resembling disappointment. She picks up her bag and walks out without another glance in his direction.

Rosa shakes her head at his inaction and points emphatically at the exit. The realisation that he really, _really_ has to go after her hits him almost simultaneously and he’s on his feet before his brain can even catch up with his legs. They’ll see each other tomorrow at work of course, but there’s a feeling in his heart that tells him this is their last chance. He takes five long strides before sparing a glance to the Captain’s office, concerned he’ll realise he’s gone. He’s only known the new captain a day but he already doubts he’ll be thrilled to have one of his detectives go MIA, even if it is in the name of love.

“I’ll cover for you,” Rosa hisses at him, reading his mind. “ _Go_ , Jake!”

(Honestly, protest she might, but all Rosa is missing at this point is a pair of wings and a magic wand.)

Jake runs down the stairs when the lift doesn’t immediately arrive, bashing heavily into several people on the way and almost tripping on the final steps in his haste. He bursts out into the street, scanning up and down for her but finding nothing. Jake’s glad and annoyed on-street parking in front of the precinct is so bad and everyone uses the lot behind the building to park because it means first, that he still has a chance of catching her but second, that he’s going to have to run. Jake barely even knows what it is he’s going to say when he gets to her, in this kid-at-the-end-of-Love-Actually stunt he’s found himself pulling. He can only hope it works, or at least they can come back from it if it doesn’t because he’s very aware of just how far he’s sticking his neck out here.

Once Jake catches a glimpse of her coat among the throng of people, he barely notices anything else—not the thrumming of his heart or the hard footfalls of his trainers on the sidewalk. Maybe it’s just his imagination but it kinda seems like the light from the late afternoon sun falls only on her with everyone else filling out the drab space around her. But then, if he skims back through his memories of her since they’ve known each other, it’s almost always been like that.

He skids in front of her on the sidewalk and Amy looks alarmed. Her hand reaches towards her gun holster before she realises it’s him. “Jake, what-”

“So I have this friend,” Jake starts without preamble, attempting to catch his breath. He knows if he hesitates he’ll lose his bottle.  

“A friend…” Amy says uncertainly while Jake briefly braces his hands on his knee caps, taking a lungful of air.

He stands up straight again and looks her in the eye. “Yeah, a friend. And he… he likes this girl. Woman, even. I mean, he _really_ likes her. Probably has for a lot longer than he even realises, and even when he ‘moved on’ or whatever… he never really gave up on the idea of them being together, not really.”

Jake watches her confused expression give way to apprehensive understanding, her eyes softening and becoming guarded all at once. “Jake…” she says and he hopes it’s not pity he hears there.

He looks down and continues before she can stop him or he can think too hard about her reaction. If she tells him no after this then he’ll let go for good (somehow), but he needs her to hear him out. He has to know. “And their relationship got really complicated and even though he still really-” Jake steps forward, reaching for her hesitantly: his hands on her elbows before trailing down to hold her hands loosely. Amy doesn't pull away, and when Jake looks up she’s staring at him, eyes wide and lips parted “- _really_ wants them to be together… he doesn't know whether he should stop trying, if it’s too late for them.”

“Jake,” Amy says again. He’s not sure what she’s pleading for.

He swallows the heavy lump in his throat. He’s laid himself open, and there’s no ‘we can’t talk to each other for six months’ clause he can rely on here to escape the terror of what her answer might be. Whatever it is he has to listen. “What would you tell him to do?” he finally asks, hearing desperation rip into his tone.

The next few moments are some of the very longest of his life. Whatever happens now, he’ll remember for the rest of his life: as the moment he got the girl he’s been falling for (whether he knew it or not) since they met or the moment he started thinking about where would be the best precinct to transfer to get over her for good. This would change his life whatever happened; the weight of that realisation made every muscle in his body tighten all at once while Amy briefly tore her eyes away, swallowing hard in preparation to speak.

“Jake,” she says, a third and final time. Her hands fumble in his until their fingers are laced together tightly between them. “You already know the answer.”

For the maybe first time, she's wide open too –the bit he’ll remember best is the look in her eyes, because he’s sure he looks exactly the same right now-  and she's right, he does know the answer and his heart is soaring. But he still needs to check. “Amy Santiago… will you go on a date with me? For realz?”

“For realz… yes,” she tells him.

 They share the same amazed look for a second before they’re grabbing for each other, right in the middle of street. It’s so goddamn Love Actually that Jake would kinda want to punch them in the face for being so cliché if he weren’t so happy. As it is, he would have happily stood there all day kissing her, getting weird looks from passers-by. Literally nothing else matters but her hands sliding around the back of his neck, his lacing around the small of her back so there’s no distance between them  anymore (he’s sick to death of distance between them.)

Amy pulls away first (he can feel himself chasing her lips again once she’s gone but he reminds himself they have time for all of this. They have so much time. Finally.) and rests her forehead against his. He pushes a lock of her hair behind her ear, losing his fingers momentarily.

"You're supposed to be at work, Jake,” she murmurs, making no move to leave.

He’d genuinely almost forgotten. “Am I?”

“Yes, you are,” she laughs. She presses another quick kiss to his mouth then playfully pushing him away. “Go. You can kiss me all you want when you’re not breaking rules.”

“Is that a promise?” Jake asks hopefully, grinning and walking backwards so he doesn't have to stop looking at her.

She’s smiling too, shaking her head. “Go, Jake.”

(Jake spends the rest of his shift practically skipping around the precinct. He thinks he sees Rosa smile behind her coffee mug but she covers it up with an indifferent eye roll before he can be sure.)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure how I feel about this but I've literally been writing it since just after the finale aired (all but the last section were written in a few weeks but the last section took me months to write) and it's been my problem child fic since then so I'm glad I finished it before s3 inevitably josses it with a much better narrative lol.


End file.
